Bankruptcy was not entirely unexpected in the case of these two ailing retailers. Despite Mandelson pleading with Woolies’ bankers into the early hours of this morning they pulled the plug regardless. Tuppence off prices won’t make much difference for them.

Keen readers will notice the change to the portfolio on the right hand side for the first time in a month. Guido has just shorted FTSE futures and Dow futures. Combination of bad local news and a sense that there is a mood of bailout fatigue in the U.S. There is usually a “Santa Claus rally” in the markets at year end. Not sure Santa is going to come this year…

At first glance the just released Electoral Commission figures show that the Conservatives raised £5,315,271 (over 20% of which came from taxpayer subsidy) and Labour raised a total of £7,649,747 in donations.

Actually when you break it down it looks like Lord Sainsbury wrote off £2,511,808 in loans and interest, converting the debt into a donation, Sir David Garrard did the same for £352,278 and Sir Gulam Noon likewise for £307,576. J K Rowling put £1 million of her Potter profits into propping up Labour. The rest of the money came from the unions apart from a donation-in-kind from Saatchi and Saatchi for their crap “Not Flash, Just Gordon” campaign.

UPDATE : Contrary to the Press Association report which all the rest of the media (both broadcast and print) are using for their reports, the total figure for loans converted is not £2.25m. It totals £3,171,662 in loans and interest written off from Lord Sainsbury, Sir Gulam Noon and Sir David Gerrard – the latter in the form of a partial conversion of his loan and interest into a donation. Guido just confirmed this with the Electoral Commission. Don’t they check their sources? Guido 1, Big Media 0.

Have just watched (for the first time all the way through) Sky’s coverage of PMQs and have to say the post-match play-by-play format is superior to Brillo’s post-PMQs style – have a few old political war horses round to chuck in their tuppence on the issues – format. It was a bit stale and boring in comparison.

Sky’s coverage was more like sports reporting, which is how it should be. PMQs is a bloodsport…

Gordon’s dithering now appears to be the official government macro-policy stance. We all remember the introduction of the 10p tax rate, the disastrously implemented abolition of it, then Gordon being forced to compensate losers he denied existed. We can see with this inadvertent release of the Treasury document on the implementation of the immediate VAT cut and the planned subsequent VAT hike, how Gordon’s government really operates:

He isn’t able to tell the voters the truth.

He dithers: clearly the intention is to hike VAT later to recoup the revenue lost from the VAT cut now. They were planning to announce that. Cowardice got hold of them and they backed away from admitting it at the last moment.

Incompetence: they hastily re-jig the Pre-Budget-Report to hide this intention, but neglect to delete the truth from all the documents released and fail to fully recalculate the figures. The numbers now don’t add up and there is a £100 billion black hole unexplained. The suspicion is that other tax hikes are being hidden.

These are indeed serious times, so this kind of low political maneuvering is not just politically dishonest, it further damages confidence. It also shows politicians in the worst light, Guido would argue it actually shows them in a truthful light. World weary columnists like Michael White and Polly Toynbee say that Guido’s political analysis is flawed by his hostility to politicians. Guido argues that the public interest is ill-served by pundits who are too sympathetic and close to politicians.

Well here is a chance for them to demonstrate their superior powers of political analysis of this fundamental dishonesty with the voters. Go on Michael/Polly, stop sneering in the margins, explain how this is in the public interest and not narrow party electoral interest. Go on, for once: justify this behaviour.